I've said so in the other thread as well:On my machine setup (C2D-E6750@3.6, ubuntu7.04, BOINC 5.10.8) I get too much.

I've got 3 projects with more than 40 Credits/hour in my stats: Seti-Opt, QMC and Cosmology.

Next best are around 30 C/h: CPDN, SIMAP, Einstein, SAP, ABC.

I claim about 22 C/h, and the projects roughly in that area are: RCN, malaria, WCG, Xtreme, Chess960 and Lattice

I get reasonably less (down to 14 C/h) on the following ones: Spin, Pirates, Leiden, BRaTS.

For my machine 30 credits would be the "right" amount, but I know that usually Linux isn't taken as the standard, as most crunchers use Windows. In the beginning Linux was a lot faster than Windows per WU, if that's the reason for the difference still, it's OK.

I've scanned the forum, but haven't immediately found anything relevant, so, for Win 7 64bit, is there any need to download a special CUDA driver or anything? I'm running the vanilla nvidia 258.96 for a GTX 260. Any optimization I should be doing?

I've scanned the forum, but haven't immediately found anything relevant, so, for Win 7 64bit, is there any need to download a special CUDA driver or anything? I'm running the vanilla nvidia 258.96 for a GTX 260. Any optimization I should be doing?

You should be fine. Note that XP & Linux are faster than Win7 in GPUGRID.

It is. Set Collatz as a backup with project priority 0. It will automatically pick up when GPUGRID runs out of work. This works for MilkyWay too. If you use the latest (6.10.6) beta client it will only DL 1 WU at a time as needed.

Set Collatz as a backup with project priority 0. It will automatically pick up when GPUGRID runs out of work. This works for MilkyWay too. If you use the latest (6.11.6) beta client it will only DL 1 WU at a time as needed.

Sir Beyond,

Thank you for the excellent advice. When I went to update to the beta client yesterday we where at 6.11.7, which I loaded. Milkyway went down over night and now I'm picking up my fill-in project one work unit at a time. Excellent!!

Not sure how I can measure that? the gpugrid website says "recent average credit 4,020." I've only been running for ~2 days now. No idea if that's average per day or what?

Let me know and I can try and share the info.

EDIT: the benchmark feature of BOINC seems to be limited to CPU. Is there a GPU benchmark I can try?

I was more thinking of an average time to complete the WUs. I think there are "standard" WUs, at least as far as awarded credit. The performance within the "standard" WUs was typically pretty consistent. Any info you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Not sure how I can measure that? the gpugrid website says "recent average credit 4,020." I've only been running for ~2 days now. No idea if that's average per day or what?

Let me know and I can try and share the info.

EDIT: the benchmark feature of BOINC seems to be limited to CPU. Is there a GPU benchmark I can try?

I was more thinking of an average time to complete the WUs. I think there are "standard" WUs, at least as far as awarded credit. The performance within the "standard" WUs was typically pretty consistent. Any info you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Oatmeal's GTX 460 did the common 9614 credit KASHIF_HIVPR in just over 27,800 seconds ( around 30,000 credits/day). As a comparison my GT 240 cards do about 46,000 seconds and my GTX 260 about 18,000 seconds on the same WUs. IMO Fermi cards have been a disappointment on GPUGRID. You can speed them up somewhat by running Linux or WinXP and using the swan_sync setting and dedicating a CPU core to the card. I also bought a GTX 460 for the project but have it crunching Collatz instead where it does very well, averaging 110,000 credits/day. BTW, my cards are somewhat OCed.

The GTX 2xx cards are EOL, so used is probably the best way to get them. The Fermi cards seem to be a downgrade for GPUGRID, but are MUCH faster than the GTX 2xx series for Collatz.

Quote:

I also have no clue which projects do well on what hardware. For instance, I have my CPU's crunching Aqua and my GPU's crunching GPUGrid. I have no idea if I should flip that around?

CPUs on AQUA is a good way to go. With your GTX 460 I'd personally go with Collatz but if you want to do a protein project GPUGRID is a good choice too. If you do want to run Collatz, I can post parameters to help you optimize your output.

I have a couple of GTX460s (one 768MB and one 1GB), but I haven't been able to cajole them into downloading GPUGRID WUs. It just doesn't download anything. They work great in Collatz, both are faster than my GTX285. In MilkyWay, it's about a draw and they do well in dnetc (they don't do as well as ATI in either, but...). I am going to give them a run in SETI after I hit 2.5 million in dnetc, to see how they work there.

I just upgraded my GTX260 to a GTX570, and I decided to try this project again. Note to self: this is an easy project to starve the GPU with - make sure the CPU boinc projects aren't using one of your cores, so that the GPU stays busy - factor of 10 performance improvement!

Note to self: this is an easy project to starve the GPU with - make sure the CPU boinc projects aren't using one of your cores, so that the GPU stays busy - factor of 10 performance improvement!

Where can I tell BOINC to use 100% of my cpu overall, yet only devote 3 out of 4 cores to cpu projects while reserving that last core to my GPU? I'm not seeing that in the preferences, but I may be overlooking something.

I have changed my GPUGrid preferences to go from 20% to 100% max usage of a CPU core, but that hasn't yet changed what boinc shows as the usage of my GTX 560 GPUGrid task against the CPU (0.14 CPUs).

I must be misunderstanding what you're trying to say here. I would happily boost my GPUGrid scores if I could (although they seem to be kinda ok as is), but I'm not following.

Where can I tell BOINC to use 100% of my cpu overall, yet only devote 3 out of 4 cores to cpu projects while reserving that last core to my GPU? I'm not seeing that in the preferences, but I may be overlooking something.

I believe you can do it this way. In BOINC manager Advanced > Preferences > processor usage > on multi cpu systems use at most 75% of the processors.

I have not done this on GPUgrid but if I recall correctly, it worked with Milkway on the gpu and various cpu only projects. You could even put in 95% instead of 75 and only 3 cores will be running cpu tasks leaving the last core free for GPUgrid

I believe you can do it this way. In BOINC manager Advanced > Preferences > processor usage > on multi cpu systems use at most 75% of the processors.[/quote]

Didn't work for me. My GTX 260 still uses .3 CPUs, and my GTX 560 uses .14 CPUs, regardless of what I set that value to (I even set it to 50 since I have WUProp running on a CPU, thinking maybe I need to free two cores, but no dice). I also restarted boinc, just to be sure. What does Milkyway, or GPUGrid, show for processor utilization when you get this working successfully? 10x performance increase would be awesome. I could get a million a day instead of my measly 100K. And we could use it as we have about 10 teams on track to pass us in GPUGrid.

...Didn't work for me. My GTX 260 still uses .3 CPUs, and my GTX 560 uses .14 CPUs, regardless of what I set that value to (I even set it to 50 since I have WUProp running on a CPU, thinking maybe I need to free two cores, but no dice)....

This won't change the .3 and .14 numbers, it only affects the CPU-only boinc applications you're running on the same box, such that a CPU core is in fact available when needed to keep the GPU fed and busy.

Bad news: if you're already getting 100K+ on a GTX 560, this isn't going to get you a factor of 10 (apparently you're GPU isn't nearly as starved as mine was), although I suppose a worthwhile improvement might still result.

...Didn't work for me. My GTX 260 still uses .3 CPUs, and my GTX 560 uses .14 CPUs, regardless of what I set that value to (I even set it to 50 since I have WUProp running on a CPU, thinking maybe I need to free two cores, but no dice)....

This won't change the .3 and .14 numbers, it only affects the CPU-only boinc applications you're running on the same box, such that a CPU core is in fact available when needed to keep the GPU fed and busy.

Bad news: if you're already getting 100K+ on a GTX 560, this isn't going to get you a factor of 10 (apparently you're GPU isn't nearly as starved as mine was), although I suppose a worthwhile improvement might still result.

That's true the numbers you see for cpu on gpugrid wont change. What you have to watch is how much the processing time changes or how much your avg credits change ion that system. you can also look in task manager to see what it has to say. It will most likely jump around since gpugrind does not need the cpu all the time. but those are the best ways of seeing any difference your changes will make

The GPUgrid now has CUDA 4.2 applications out for Kepler GPUs. They also appear to speed up Fermi GPUs as well. The thread from the News section is here:http://www.gpugrid.net/forum_thread.php?id=3037#25895I've given it a try on my GTS 450 (Fermi). I installed the latest drivers and then CUDA 4.2. It seems to be working as a MJHARVEY task that takes 26 hours with CUDA 3.1 is now projected to take 15 hours with CUDA 4.2

Haven't run GPUGrid in 2 years but it certainly seems to have improved since then. One thing I forgot was the importance of keeping a small WU queue in order to get the 50% bonus for <24 hour turnaround.

1) Keep a very small queue set so WUs will finish and be reported in under 24 hours.(use <report_results_immediately>1</report_results_immediately> in your cc_config.xml.)

2) If your GPU can process long WUs in under 24 hours disable running short WUs in your project preferences.(long WUs receive 2x the credit/hour compared to short WUs. Realistically, even if you miss the 50% bonus you're still better off)

3) Make sure there is a CPU core free to support GPUGrid, this will reduce failed WUs.

Go into the BOINC Preferences in Your Account at GPUGrid. Change the setting that states "Maintain enough work for an additional" to a smaller number, 0.1 or maybe even 0 and you be completing the units in under 24 hours from download. Also make sure the setting above it ("Computer is connected to the Internet about every") to zero so it does not try and keep that additional work.

The last one is to reiterate Beyond's #1 tip. Set up a config.xml file using notepad and make sure that the line: